Keep on the Shadowfell: Part Five

This is part five of a continuing series documenting the deeds (sometimes heroic) of the adventurers (sometimes worthy) that I DM for once a fortnight. It's primarily here so I can remember what the hell was going on in the last session, although usually I've forgotten most of it by the time I come to write it up. See all previous entries here.

Having defeated the first batch of goblins in their guard room at the entrance to the Keep, our party were left with various exits to consider. Passageways and locked doors led to the west and south respectively, and as they were examining their surroundings, Scrindrel the Ranger heard faint screams from the north-west.

Following their previous misfortune with traps, the adventurers approached cautiously and, after passing a storeroom, found a what appeared to be a torture chamber, complete with assorted blood stains, iron maiden*, rack, tables of various implements of torture, and a terrifying hobgoblin eager to use them. Flanked by further goblin warriors, the hobgoblin attempted to bullrush Searos into the iron maiden but was unsuccessful. One of the goblin warriors tried to lure Marroar into a cage in the corner, but just made a fool of himself over a prolonged period of time. Malachi made some critical back stab sneak attacks, Scrindrel showered the enemies with arrows, and Giovana was at hand with divine healing and/or killing rays (depending on your allegiance to Giovana). Again, I'm paraphrasing. I should really write these the next day or something.

Shortly before the end of the battle, Scrindrel and Malachi found a naked beaten goblin in a cell by the name of Splug, who promised to help the adventurers in return for his freedom. Scrindrel was prepared to make such a deal, and Malachi offered Splug interesting new bone configurations to consider should he try to double-cross them. In the meantime however, their alliance was cemented through the process of Malachi using Splug as a human goblin shield.

Once the goblins were defeated along with their hobgoblin leader, Splug dressed himself in the armour of his former torturers, and relayed all the useful information he could about the surrounding environs. He was familiar with various rooms used by the goblins, including an excavation to the east. He also knew that their leader was Balgron the Fat, and that there was a secret passage that led directly to his quarters. He was unable to provide any further useful information, despite encouraging threats of bodily violence from Malachi.

The party decided to investigate the excavation to the east next, and in the approaching corridor found a secret passageway that they assumed led to Balgron's quarters. However, they failed in stealth and, alerted to their presence, the goblins in the excavation attacked, flanked by two guard drakes.

Another fierce battle commenced. The excavation site made it very difficult - the large chamber contained patches of the original floor dotted around like islands between massive trenches where the goblins had dugs to depths of up to 10ft in search of something. Rickety planks connected these ladders, and it was Searos who found out the hard way that these planks simply weren't designed for dwarves who wore heavy armour and had a penchant for carbohydrates.

Finally the battle was won, and the party could regroup before taking Balgron's quarters. Stay tuned! Next time: An increase in story accuracy guaranteed!

* As it was pointed out to me during the game, Iron Maiden's were never actually a real-life middle-ages torture device. Did you know that Dragons aren't real either?

Subversion errors and inodes

Here's a couple of things I ran into today that you may find useful. I've been running some I/O comparisons with SVN servers, tuning mod_svn, and basically comparing various physical disk configurations to EC2 based solutions, where the I/O throughput you get largely depends on the phases of the moon. Anyway, in the process of hastily setting up various Apache servers here and there, I spotted this error when trying to checkout from an SVN repo on the command line:

Subversion error: Repository moved permanently to ********* please relocate

The location the repo had moved to was invariably the location I'd already specified, and the odd thing was I didn't get this error when viewing the repo in a browser. I'd confused myself by having a complicated LDAP-backed authentication scheme in the way, but the problem basically boiled down to this:

When you set up your virtual host, your DocumentRoot and your SVNParentPath can't be the same, otherwise Apache gets confused with how to serve them, although, surprisingly, not to a web browser.

The other little snag I came across while doing all sorts of multiple checkouts of massive repos to measure I/O was this silly little annoyance:

svn: Can't open file: No space left on device

Which was annoying because I'd leave the checkout running for ages and come back to find it hanging on this. Of course, it's checking out to a massive logical volume on a massive disk with plenty of free space. So where's the problem?

Well, in a blast from the past, it's simply a matter of running out of inodes. Not something you come across every day, so relatively easy to miss (especially when you're working on a Sunday. Why are you doing that anyway?). A simple df -i will show you what's what. How you give yourself a file system with more inodes is up to you of course.

Sugru is awesome and you should go buy some now

Sugru is an amazing success story, and it's one of those rare things - a new product that is actually useful, serves a purpose and makes the world a better place. It's a self-setting rubber you can mould by hand that sets into a strong flexible rubber, and it can be used to fix or enhance almost anything. B&Q are trialling it for 3 months so if you see some in one of their shops, buy it!

Start your journey on the road to fixing and making things, and maybe one day, you'll be like Ron Swanson:

Keep on the Shadowfell: Part Four

This is part four of a continuing series documenting the heroic deeds of the worthy adventurers I DM for once a fortnight. It's primarily here so I can remember what the hell was going on in the last game. Read parts: one, two and three.

Kobolds, kobolds and more kobolds. That's all our adventurers had seen for days it seemed. But finally they were all slain, and it was time to return to Winterhaven to claim their reward. At Wrafton's Inn they were proclaimed the heroes of Winterhaven, and Lord Padraig handed over their promised reward of 250 gold pieces.

While enjoying a hearty breakfast, Marroar, Searos, Scrindrel and Giovana were approached by an entrepreneurial tiefling named Malachi, who, on seeing their reward of gold, fancied that the party had good luck with their adventures and wished to join them. They agreed.

The townspeople were acting strangely. Though they were certainly grateful for the absence of Kobolds, they could tell there was some new evil afoot, something even more sinister than before. The party sought Valthrun the Prescient and told him of their recent encounters. As the town's scholar, he immediately linked the strange activity to the legends of the nearby ruined Keep, suspecting the Kobolds were part of a plot to reopen the rift. The stories told that the rift led to no less than the unholy sanctuary of Orcus, the demon lord of the undead, and that if it were opened, terrible monsters would be unleashed on the world and would devour Winterhaven, just for starters.

Valthrun also told the party of Sir Keegan, last commander of the keep garrison, who eighty years ago appeared to go mad and murder everyone under his command, and then his own wife and children. His ghost is rumoured to still haunt the keep. Valthrun urged our adventurers to seal the rift, before Orcus' minions of the undead were released again.

Sounds like fun, everyone thought.

And so, they made preparations for the daunting task ahead. After some careful bartering at Bairwin's Grand Shoppe, Marroar was able to trade an antique mirror for a +1 magical staff. Healing potions and alchemist's fire were purchased. In addition, much upgrading of armour occurred. Searos did lots of interesting and important stuff that I seem to have largely forgotten, due to a particularly nasty cold I had on the weekend. Sorry.

Finally, the party set out for the keep.

Approaching the ruins, the forest turned quiet and everyone was filled with an eerie sense of dread. Although the above ground structure had been felled by years of decay, it was clear that there had been a recent disturbance of the rocks, and a path had been cleared to some steps that led downwards.

Entering what appeared to be an underground guard room, a single Goblin Warrior waited at the end of a corridor, eyeing the adventurers cautiously. Malachi, the brave new tiefling, ran forwards to attack, and immediately fell into a cleverly disguised pit trap. Luckily he was able to climb out shortly after, and escape a swarm of poisonous rats. Disturbed by the noise, several more Goblin guards appeared, and a fierce battle ensued.

Again, much of the details have been lost to massive doses of Lemsip I'm afraid. I'll do better next time.

Needless to say, our party was victorious, and now faces a labyrinth of terrifying tunnels and malicious monsters, tempting treasures and terrible traps. Stay tuned!